tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977154477529791242017-12-09T15:21:28.194-05:00Sadie Belle ReadsAmy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.comBlogger137125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-2582633127183326852017-12-06T06:33:00.001-05:002017-12-06T06:39:49.588-05:00Waiting for the Present<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gvRmQ86hI9w/WifI9F1C5SI/AAAAAAAAA1o/sLp00SjoH7wda5h9kFP3Zueod5DJp3TXACLcBGAs/s1600/Kindle%2BLight%2BThru%2BDepression%2BGlass.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gvRmQ86hI9w/WifI9F1C5SI/AAAAAAAAA1o/sLp00SjoH7wda5h9kFP3Zueod5DJp3TXACLcBGAs/s320/Kindle%2BLight%2BThru%2BDepression%2BGlass.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Amy Brandon</td></tr></tbody></table><div align="center">&nbsp;</div><div align="center"><em><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark...But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things just as they are, just what they've always seen, was seeing Him.&nbsp; As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."&nbsp; ~Sook in Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory"</span></em></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">I haven't liked Christmas for a very long time.&nbsp; Christmas is my husband's favorite holiday.&nbsp; You can see the problem here. I haven't liked Christmas since my family and I put up the Christmas tree to surprise my brother when he came home from his date one Saturday night 29 years ago, and he never came home.&nbsp; That kind of trauma can put you right off a Christmas tree. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">When I spent my first Christmas with Ken, I realized I was going to have to work through some issues&nbsp;(a lot of issues, actually, but this post is about Christmas). So I've learned to put up a tree again, and we've started some new traditions. One of&nbsp;them is reading Christmas stories aloud to each other. Our first Christmas together a couple of years ago, he read his favorite to me.&nbsp; This year, it was my turn, so Monday night, sitting by the bonfire and watching the Cold Moon rise, I read to him "A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">"A Christmas Memory" is a heart-warming and heart-wrenching reminiscence of an idyllic time in Capote's childhood right before&nbsp;rectitude and Baptist morality&nbsp;ruin everything.&nbsp;His&nbsp;lyrical and evocative language carries me away to a place and time lost to both him and me.&nbsp; The story is of the beginning of the Christmas season for&nbsp;Capote and his cousin, Sook.&nbsp; (Her name is not mentioned in this story but is in another of his stories called "One Christmas.")&nbsp; Sook, though sixty-something to his&nbsp;seven, is Capote's best childhood friend. They live together, along with various other adult cousins he satrically dubs "Those Who Know Best." Because Sook is different: naive, child-like, and simple, Those Who Know Best treat her with dismissive disdain, but her depth of feeling and understanding far outshine those who have her in their charge.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">After a perfectly innocent and natural incident with some whisky leftover from making fruitcake, Those Who Know Best swoop in and impose&nbsp;the arc of their moral&nbsp;will on Capote and Sook, and nothing is ever the same again.&nbsp;&nbsp;A story that is both beautiful and sad may not seem like the best kind of Christmas story to some, but it is perfect for me.&nbsp; It is perfect for all of us for whom Christmas is both&nbsp;beautiful and sad, we the broken living&nbsp;who realize how closely intertwined beauty and sadness are and who have come to know intimately that not only does the one not preclude the other, but&nbsp;also to know&nbsp;that there is a certain kind of beauty that grows only out of sadness.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">﻿</div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-60118729102156640812017-11-26T22:35:00.000-05:002017-11-26T23:05:30.712-05:00Things Best Left Unsaid<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BHeLlTVahrU/WhuGNKafJVI/AAAAAAAAA1E/1KwFdQI8sqMbt_fpX58z-1rDTney5GV2ACLcBGAs/s1600/Belle%2527s%2BNose%2Bin%2BDark%2BPlaces.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1082" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BHeLlTVahrU/WhuGNKafJVI/AAAAAAAAA1E/1KwFdQI8sqMbt_fpX58z-1rDTney5GV2ACLcBGAs/s320/Belle%2527s%2BNose%2Bin%2BDark%2BPlaces.JPG" width="298" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Amy Brandon</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><em>"Sometimes it seemed to me that my daughter had a need to fly into a rage."</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Fredrik Welin in Henning Mankell's <u>After the Fire</u></em>﻿</div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">All my life I've been drawn to solitude. Spare, barren, windswept, lonely snowscapes wrap me in truth and take my mind to a place I've never been able to&nbsp;find any other way. Anything&nbsp;hinting at unrelenting cold and solitude&nbsp;enchant me. My&nbsp;mental safe place&nbsp;has always been a windowed berth on a train speeding through a snow-covered landscape.&nbsp; Last year, when I stumbled on <u>Out Stealing Horses</u> by Per Petterson and <u>Italian Shoes</u> by Henning Mankell, I felt like I had died and gone to the heaven I don't believe in.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">When I recognized the similarities between the two books, I decided to re-read them both, making notes as I went.&nbsp; I did re-read <u>Italian Shoes</u> and loved it as much the second time around as the first.&nbsp; Before I got around to re-reading <u>Out Stealing Horses</u>, I stumbled across <u>After the Fire</u> by Henning Mankell, which is a sequel to <u>Italian Shoes</u>.&nbsp; I was wandering around my new local LOCAL bookshop (Bookmarks in Winston-Salem) when I found <u>After the Fire</u>.&nbsp; What a great bookshop!&nbsp; The book though...well...</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">I was so happy to find a book that was the unknown sequel to a book I had loved. But here is what happened:&nbsp; I find myself, involuntarily, to be reading&nbsp;through the cultural lens of my time, and I am so tired of being constantly confronted with men's icky sex obsessions.&nbsp; I mean, honestly, at this point, what I would (or maybe wouldn't) like to know is are all men dysfunctional sex addicts?&nbsp;&nbsp;A lot of books would lend evidence to the answer to that being yes. In that case, I'd like to go on not knowing for sure, thanks anyway.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">There are so many good things about this book, so many beautiful ideas, beautiful words, made even more beautiful by the retrospective knowledge that Henning Mankell was writing this book in the last years of his life.&nbsp; But damn, man...men...stop with the icky sex ideation.&nbsp; Just stop.&nbsp; Seriously.&nbsp; </span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">I can't even go on from here.&nbsp;I'd like to.&nbsp;I have so many passages marked that I'd like to share and consider. I'd like to discuss the book and its merits, but all I can say is that the constant 70 year old dude wanting to bang the 30 year old chick fantasy completely overshadowed everything else for me right now, which is just sad and a real waste.&nbsp; So I'm done with this, and again I think maybe&nbsp;I may have to read only&nbsp;women authors until I get this "Oh Look Who's A Sexual Predator Now" taste out of my mouth.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-31029274906724279462017-11-19T09:00:00.001-05:002017-11-19T09:00:12.065-05:00Our Dirty Glass Castles<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ih3zAsQnzRs/WhGNK3SbPTI/AAAAAAAAA0o/3vWovgJenloxl5iOqQzVxPhhG97Ne2DlwCEwYBhgL/s1600/Red-Eye%2BTurtle.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ih3zAsQnzRs/WhGNK3SbPTI/AAAAAAAAA0o/3vWovgJenloxl5iOqQzVxPhhG97Ne2DlwCEwYBhgL/s320/Red-Eye%2BTurtle.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Amy Brandon</td></tr></tbody></table><div align="center"><div align="center"><em><span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span></em>&nbsp;</div><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><em>"Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?"</em></span><br /><div align="center"><em><span style="font-family: Georgia;">~Miss Kenton in <u>The Remains of the Day</u></span></em></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><u></u></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><u>The Remains of the Day</u> by Kazuo Ishiguro is a beautiful introspectively retrospective novel, but I must admit</span> <span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">I had&nbsp;a bipolar&nbsp;relationship with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For a while, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The entire novel is a narration of the past by Stevens the Butler, who is the opposite of woke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I found myself losing patience with his cluelessness and his repression on more than one occasion. Steven’s memory is so colored and re-cast that much of it has become fallacy, a narrative he tells himself as a comfort, as a justification, sometimes almost a celebration, of his existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; Instead of seeing things as they were, he assauges his own doubts by casting them in a muted, better light, which apparently was his habit throughout his life. </span>Do we all do this, I wonder?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>I suppose to an extent, we do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>I suspect forgiveness itself hinges somewhat on being able to forget or at least to temper&nbsp;our memories. How much do any of us have to find a way to excuse and/or justify the choices we have made over a lifetime? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>This theme harks back to <u>The Buried Giant</u>, also by Kazuo Ishiguro, where a collective memory wipe was necessary for a group of people to live in peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span>&nbsp;</div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">Poor Stevens works so hard to cast his father in the light of the ever-illusive patriarchal perfection and then strives his whole life to live up to the unattainable, imagined&nbsp;standard&nbsp;of a long-dead father.&nbsp;Eventually, Stevens ingratiated himself with me, and I found myself feeling sorry for him, in his bumbling cluelessness, as I often tend to do with bumbling, clueless people in real life.&nbsp; But now I begin to wonder how much that kind of permissive, maternal sympathy is to blame for the liberal latitudes men have been allowed for centuries? It brings to mind the sociological issue of raising our daughters and loving our sons.&nbsp; M<span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">en like Stevens the Butler want to live in a bubble, and they want the people around them to help them maintain that bubble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>When someone begins to prod at the flimsy walls of self-deception they’ve constructed, they shut down, run away, or lash out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They use cluelessness or repression or denial or privilege or some combination of these defenses (See Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK) to maintain their slick glass castles in the air, never bothering to look down to see the earth at their feet, where the rest of us stand bearing the burden of their fallacious facades.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></span>&nbsp;</div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><u>The Remains of the Day</u>&nbsp; won me over eventually, and I have now come to miss the voice of Stevens the Butler, but I don't miss his infuriating habit of obsessing on all the wrong things or his constant attempts to justify and explain his past.</span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div>&nbsp;</div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-32876950813196977772017-11-10T23:51:00.000-05:002017-11-10T23:58:59.332-05:00Things You Never Want to Hear Your Mom Say<div class="MsoNormal"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hFM8GS2um6M/WgZ33XEa5tI/AAAAAAAAAzg/TO8r1-ujGJwj9IiGZ_aNkv77Ijud24H7ACEwYBhgL/s1600/DSC02326.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hFM8GS2um6M/WgZ33XEa5tI/AAAAAAAAAzg/TO8r1-ujGJwj9IiGZ_aNkv77Ijud24H7ACEwYBhgL/s320/DSC02326.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Amy Brandon</td></tr></tbody></table>When I was 25, I read <u>Pillars of the Earth</u> by Ken Follett, and I fell in love.&nbsp; I fell in love with Tom Builder and with the story of how he got his name and the history of cathedral building, which felt to me like a history of communal faith itself.&nbsp; So much of the story felt like something I remembered, as strange as that seemed at the time.&nbsp; In the age of epigenetics and DNA testing that “remembering” &nbsp;feels less strange and much more possible now, but that’s a topic for a different post.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Years later, when &nbsp;the second book, <u>World Without End</u> came out, I was discussing its arrival with one of my friends. &nbsp;She said, “Yeah, I liked <u>Pillars of the Earth,</u> but I got really tired of all the rape and weird sex stuff.”&nbsp; I was at a loss for words, because I didn’t even remember any of the sex stuff.&nbsp;&nbsp; To this day, I have no idea if there is rape and weird sex stuff in <u>Pillars of the Earth</u>, because I haven’t re-read it.&nbsp; Possibly it’s there, and I ignored it, because I am the Queen of Not Seeing What I Don’t Want to See (again a different post). &nbsp;Currently, at the ripe old age of 2(25), I now know there is a lot of weird sex stuff out there:&nbsp; in books, in movies, in TV shows, in comedy routines, and apparently just in life in general.&nbsp; I do not know why this is.&nbsp; Do not ask me.&nbsp; I do not understand because 1. I don’t have a penis (I use penis here in a non-gender specific way as I have met women who, while they don't have a physical penis, have a penis in this regard), and 2. I’m pretty naïve.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Just because I am naïve does not mean I am a prude or a fan of censorship.&nbsp; I am not easily offended. I love sex. I even like some porn, assuming it's the kind where no one is getting peed on, literally or metaphorically (file that under Things You Never Want to Hear Your Mom Say, so sorry Brandon and Anna).&nbsp; I can’t think of any kind of sex scene that does not involve one person’s infringement on another person’s dignity that would bother me.&nbsp; There are plenty of possibilities to write or to draw or to film healthy and inspiring acts of human sexuality.&nbsp; I am all for all of those. Write them.&nbsp; Film them.&nbsp; Draw them.&nbsp; Share them.&nbsp; Healthy, consensual sexuality is a beautiful gift worth celebrating.&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But sexual assault is about power.&nbsp; It is a way for people to empower themselves by asserting dominance over other people.&nbsp; It is the vehicle by which people attempt to assert dominance by saying, &nbsp;“It is my right to use your presence, your body, your personhood, your existence in this way, and you have no agency to resist.”&nbsp; Even within those words lies the power of the disenfranchised. When we resist, when we speak, we take back our power.&nbsp; When we assert ourselves, when we say, both to ourselves and to the world at large, “You did this. You are the problem.&nbsp; This was your problem until you spewed it all over me.&nbsp; I did nothing here except exist,”&nbsp;we are reclaiming our own right to be who we are and to think what we think and to want what we want, separate and apart from any one else.<br /><br />When we, as a society, consume unhealthy sexuality as entertainment, whether it’s in the form of phrases like “boys will be boys,” or “that’s just locker room talk,” or rape jokes, or the glorification of any person’s non-permissive domination over another person, we perpetuate the myth that domination is acceptable, that somehow, when it becomes art, it becomes above reproach.&nbsp;Art is just like life. There is beauty, and there is perversion. Whether it’s art imitating life or life imitating art, it’s time to stop pretending like any kind of domination is just part of who we are.&nbsp; Speaking for myself, I'm pretty sure I'm going to punch the next person who grabs my ass without permission.&nbsp; I'll risk the battery charge.<br /><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-43482022776581116222017-10-29T14:12:00.000-04:002017-10-29T14:12:11.846-04:00Fuzzy Thoughts Are Happy Thoughts?<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zHFA83f3f74/WfYZafdswkI/AAAAAAAAAys/OxsSG3GNcZ0kcUWeOVX6aqn0TMJqxd-ZgCLcBGAs/s1600/Occulus.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zHFA83f3f74/WfYZafdswkI/AAAAAAAAAys/OxsSG3GNcZ0kcUWeOVX6aqn0TMJqxd-ZgCLcBGAs/s200/Occulus.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Amy Brandon</td></tr></tbody></table><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Could it be our love would never have grown so strong down the years had the mist not robbed us the way it did?&nbsp; Perhaps it allowed old wounds to heal. ~Axl in <u>The Buried Giant<o:p></o:p></u></span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></u></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I keep telling myself one of these days (soon, I hope, as I am well out of girlhood), I am going to get old enough to be comfortable telling my truth with no carefully chosen language.&nbsp; I am amazed at how hard it is for me to offer anything that feels like criticism without feeling guilty and second-guessing myself.&nbsp; My good-girl, hush-girl, smile-girl, play-dumb-girl, Southern Baptist rearing worked a little too well.&nbsp; I mean for god’s sake I had to preface this blog post with a mini-psychological analysis just to be able to say that my reaction to Kazuo Ishiguro’s <u>The Buried Giant</u> was, well…meh.&nbsp; How do I dare criticize a Nobel-prize winner?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don’t mean to say I didn’t enjoy the book, or that I believe the book has no merit.&nbsp; Not at all.&nbsp; I have finally, at least, starting abandoning books I do not enjoy at all.&nbsp; This book I finished in a week, which is a normal time frame for me.&nbsp; I read a lot of different books at once, so I don’t usually finish a book in less than a week.&nbsp; Also I think people who pride themselves on&nbsp; speed-reading are compensating for something.&nbsp; I don’t even care what.&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I understand &nbsp;the symbolic lesson of <u>The Buried Giant</u>, and I like it.&nbsp; If individual memory is a small-time con man, collective memory is an international pyramid scheme.&nbsp; And the philosophical argument to be had over what’s best:&nbsp; knowing the truth always versus sometimes maybe fooling yourself or being fooled to assure your own sanity, peace of mind, ability to be happy?&nbsp; I get it.&nbsp; I really do. &nbsp;I suspect there is no constant, dual answer to this question.&nbsp; The thematic concepts in this novel are great and are well worth the time spent thinking about them.&nbsp; The presentation didn’t work for me though.&nbsp; The plot felt disjointed, the dialogue contrived, and the characters just felt confused.&nbsp; I guess it’s hard to write characters who can’t remember their own past without having them seem addled and confused, but that construct doesn’t do a lot for character development.&nbsp; Has a character developed just because that character has reclaimed its own memory?&nbsp; Who are we without our memories?&nbsp; Ah…but see there we get back into one of the philosophical themes.&nbsp; So maybe this is a brilliant book.&nbsp; Maybe I just need to be more enlightened to see it.&nbsp; Maybe that will come with age.&nbsp; Oh wait, I’m already old.&nbsp; So maybe not.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp;</div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-20395047681190151962017-10-15T14:25:00.002-04:002017-10-15T14:25:10.531-04:00Same Snake, Different Scales<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5-B9kBYFsqA/WeOmrRmaNfI/AAAAAAAAAyM/i400ZRpm8cYEu8yYprzPdDPEA0qHoaeVwCLcBGAs/s1600/Sing%2BUnburied%2BSing.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5-B9kBYFsqA/WeOmrRmaNfI/AAAAAAAAAyM/i400ZRpm8cYEu8yYprzPdDPEA0qHoaeVwCLcBGAs/s200/Sing%2BUnburied%2BSing.JPG" width="150" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">“Sometimes I think it done changed. And then I sleep and wake up, and it ain’t changed none…It’s like a snake that sheds its skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The outside look different when the scales change, but the inside always the same.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>~Richie in <u>Sing.Unburied Sing</u> by Jesmyn Ward<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">Jesmyn Ward’s <u>Sing,Unburied Sing</u> turned me inside out, put another crack in my heart, and turned on another light in my brain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>How can one small book harbor so many of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>today’s heart-breaking headlines:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the tragedy of how we treat one another because of something as shallow as skin pigmentation, the epidemic of rural drug addiction and the damage it does to families, the never-ending scourge of poverty and the way it leaves its victims voiceless for generations, and the unjust, ineptly named judicial system in America and the damage it does to us all. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Somehow, Ward shines a light on all of these while telling an engaging story and creating complex, nuanced characters that I expect we will remember for a long time. </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">Before I was through the first chapter, I loved JoJo as a precocious, wounded, strong, promising 13-year-old young man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>By the time I reached the scene where the sheriff’s deputy pulls the gun on him, I was floored by my own shocked, naïve reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>My mind went to “No, you can’t do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He’s just a child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That’s not right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That couldn’t happen.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And then I remembered that it happens every day somewhere in America, very often with more tragic results than JoJo’s luck in that scene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That’s when I realized how sheltered, how unaware on a visceral level <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>I am of what young <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>black men in America live and how overwhelmingly frightening it must be to be the parent of a black child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Even though I try to be compassionate and empathetic, I don’t have the experience, the ability to understand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It’s truly unfortunate that the people in power in this situation are also the people who have no capacity to understand the nature of its insidious truths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>How will we ever get anywhere? Maybe by beginning to understand that we cannot understand.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">Ward’s recognition this week by the MacArthur Foundation encourages me to look forward to more novels from her in the coming years. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>I haven’t read her National Book Award winner, <u>Salvage the Bones</u>, but I intend to just as soon as I can handle another emotionally wrenching novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I understand it too is set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I have a feeling both novels are just two of the stories the lyrical, perceptive Ward eventually will give us, and I know we will be better for receiving<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>them.</span></div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-50568234143973155942017-10-08T12:39:00.001-04:002017-10-08T12:39:21.365-04:00Our Shadow Selves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cv5rL9ub87s/WdpTues0xVI/AAAAAAAAAxU/dJ5vonOWnrM5KBn04-O6g0RoDZYwR6TBQCLcBGAs/s1600/Wine%2BBottle%2BSun%2BSet.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cv5rL9ub87s/WdpTues0xVI/AAAAAAAAAxU/dJ5vonOWnrM5KBn04-O6g0RoDZYwR6TBQCLcBGAs/s320/Wine%2BBottle%2BSun%2BSet.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Amy Brandon</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><i>“Of course I know what I want, she thought, but when she opened her mouth she found it empty.”<o:p></o:p></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><i>Lydia in <u>Everything I Never Told </u>You by Celeste Ng<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s dark and rainy, and I love it.&nbsp; I’m beginning to prefer days like these, to find comfort and revelation in the dark as well as in the light. My friend, Carrie, said she found <u>Everything I Never Told You</u> by Celeste Ng a bit dark for her taste.&nbsp; I remember wondering before I read it if I might feel the same.&nbsp; I usually don’t like dark books, but for some reason I didn’t have a problem with this one.&nbsp; Maybe because it is written in such a way that I knew Lydia was dead in the first three words so I never became emotionally attached to her.&nbsp; I read the book more as an interesting study of the dysfunctional way we interact with each other, especially within our families.&nbsp; </div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I liked the structure of the book – the way Ng seems to scatter random pieces of the plot and then slowly pick them up and tie them together. Even though you know the main plot point from sentence one, tension, uncertainty, and suspense still build as Ng reveals the how and why of Lydia’s death.&nbsp; The reasons we hide our truths from one another are various, but the end result is the same:&nbsp; dishonesty leads to discord and sometimes to tragedy.&nbsp; Like Lydia, many of us aren’t even able to admit our truths to ourselves. &nbsp;It seems all of the characters in <u>Everything I Never Told You</u> are hiding both from themselves and from those closest to them.&nbsp; Hidden truths become bent in the hiding and what was beautiful becomes disfigured.&nbsp; There are few things more beautiful than a fully-realized human who has the courage to live her truth, and there are few things more dangerous than its opposite. Why do we feel compelled to hide from each other as if any of us is anything other than fully human? This book is a study in what happens when we repress our truths and don’t learn to express them before it’s too late to prevent tragedy.</div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-46395364645430771482017-10-01T15:09:00.000-04:002017-10-01T15:15:33.061-04:00Just Mind the Freaking Sheep<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VdYNPqkMNYY/WdE6rb6p7lI/AAAAAAAAAws/A083Q-PmAPEy4Rnf-bbNQHAo2S7SEfBmwCLcBGAs/s1600/Sun%2Bin%2BLeaves.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VdYNPqkMNYY/WdE6rb6p7lI/AAAAAAAAAws/A083Q-PmAPEy4Rnf-bbNQHAo2S7SEfBmwCLcBGAs/s320/Sun%2Bin%2BLeaves.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">"There are larger rhythms than just our human rhythms.&nbsp; It's when we think our rhythms are the only noise, that's when we get in trouble.&nbsp; How do we stop jabbering long enough to hear something beyond ourselves?" ~John Hay</span></i></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br /><div align="center" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">"In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger."&nbsp; ~ Annie Dillard<o:p></o:p></span></i><br /><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></i></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">I’ve had a hard time getting my thoughts together about David Gessner’s <u>The Prophet of Dry Hill:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Lessons from a Life in Nature</u>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>As I understand it, Gessner began the project intending to write a biography of John Hay, the naturalist author who lived and wrote on Cape Cod in the Twentieth Century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Lived and wrote may be an understatement in Hay’s case, as it seems John Hay embodied all that was best about Cape Cod prior to its being infected with the cultural equivalent of small pox. Eventually, Gessner decides to&nbsp;write mostly&nbsp;a recording of his conversations with Hay instead of a true biography.</span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">So many ideas are presented and in such a tangential, conversational way that it has taken me about a week to begin to get a handle on them. The most important idea I took away from these conversations is&nbsp;that we keep getting it all so wrong. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;Generation after generation, w</span>e mindlessly misunderstand our role here and in so doing continue to defile the planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; W</span>e keep running after the wrong things:&nbsp; money, power, prestige, control, domination, chasing the ever-<span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">illusive golden fleece when the whole time we simply should be tending the sheep.&nbsp; <span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">John Hay was one of few&nbsp;people who realized this, thus the word prophet&nbsp;in the title, bringing to mind&nbsp;something Enrique Martinez Celaya&nbsp;said when Krista Tippet interviewed him a few months ago:&nbsp; "The prophet is not a martyr or mystic who seeks transcendence but one who turns humbly and curiously toward the world."&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>I would ask that we all try to remember that anything that is beautiful even for one moment and touches the soul of just one person has value and purpose and deserves to be treated with respect.</span></span></span></span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-23320788415431577782017-09-17T08:31:00.000-04:002017-09-17T08:31:51.893-04:00The Innocent Murderess<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a2rm80f3zvs/Wb5mTUlMZqI/AAAAAAAAAwE/Q7Nub81cByw8OgU7BC7SpZH2m322ilLiQCLcBGAs/s1600/DSC05825.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a2rm80f3zvs/Wb5mTUlMZqI/AAAAAAAAAwE/Q7Nub81cByw8OgU7BC7SpZH2m322ilLiQCLcBGAs/s200/DSC05825.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 9.5pt;">How many times have I aimlessly wandered the aisles of a bookstore picking up and putting down books whose covers catch my eye? How many of those times have the books I've bought either collected the dust of years on shelves unread or been read and completely forgotten? &nbsp;One mislaid day in 2002, the book goddess smiled on me, and I happened upon my first Margaret Atwood. I had no idea who she was at the time and have no idea to this day why, on one of my rambles through a bookstore, I picked up a copy of <u>Alias Grace</u>. What I do know is that for the next 15 years, if pressed to choose a favorite book, this random treasure was it. All my life, I've read so much that I struggle to choose a favorite book, but somehow and for reasons I still don't fully understand, this one caught me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>After all the intervening years and so many more books, including new Atwoods, I will have to revise my assessment to say <u>Alias Grace</u> is now <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">one</b> of my favorite books.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 9.5pt;">This summer, my daughter read it for the first time and urged me to re-read it. As usual, in <u>Alias Grace</u>, Atwood defies easy categorization. &nbsp;Psychological thriller, historical fiction, gothic mystery, interpersonal drama, character development and study, elements of all those fill the pages of this entertaining read. Just like many of the novel’s characters, I found myself captivated and haunted by the ever elusive Grace. Is she a cold-hearted, calculating murderess or a naïve, innocent rube?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Or, as I suspect, like most of us, is she much more complex and nuanced, harboring some qualities of both?</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt;"><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Maybe the not knowing, the uncertainty is the point. Once again, Margaret Atwood proves to be prescient. With all the recent discoveries about the fallibility of memory, with all the current failings of justice in our country and our world, and with some of our deepest spiritual leaders finally beginning to address the darkness as well as the light in all of us, we would all do well to learn to pause and think and reserve judgment more often than passing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The cautionary tale of Grace Marks teaches us, if nothing else, that the voiceless and the vulnerable are always the easiest to blame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But is that kind of easy injustice what we want to embrace?</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-84494033248957684612017-09-10T08:26:00.000-04:002017-09-10T08:34:35.394-04:00The Second Half-Century<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-10fDOGOZDD0/WbUuktcgcgI/AAAAAAAAAvU/f8KT1ZAAefMDcwS38AITJQWy1bayccYuACLcBGAs/s1600/DSC03797.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-10fDOGOZDD0/WbUuktcgcgI/AAAAAAAAAvU/f8KT1ZAAefMDcwS38AITJQWy1bayccYuACLcBGAs/s200/DSC03797.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anna at Guedelon<br />photo by Amy Brandon</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">As I have neared and now passed age 50 over the last couple years, I find myself changing slowly, like a jagged mountain eroding into a smooth stone, more likely now to be prone to naps than to tempests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As my emotions settle, my mind seems to wake and clear, and my reading interests move in different directions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Often,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I find myself reading ten or eleven books at a time now. This became possible only when I learned to let go of goal-oriented reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Usually, eventually, I will finish what I start, but not always.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Even if I don’t finish, I still find I take something positive away from most books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I look at reading now more like mining for gold dust than like searching for the Hope Diamond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Not every book is a diamond, but most contain at least a little pretty dust.</span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Right now, at this point in my life, I feel like I’m reaching the end of the person I was and am on the cusp of a new and different person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I hope this new person will be able to write more. I’ve missed writing about what I’ve read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For a time I came to feel like I either didn’t have anything new to say or wasn’t able to express what I was thinking. Maybe we all have to get quiet and shut down for a while to clear our minds for new thoughts and new ways of being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Wisdom seems to come at a glacial pace, if it comes at all, no matter how many books I devour, but I will keep on devouring them, looking for those traces of gold dust.</span></div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-39466040872004849422017-02-28T09:36:00.000-05:002017-02-28T09:36:39.502-05:00We Miss the Log in the Mirror Every Time<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BCGzFDNnX1M/WLWH2VSz-iI/AAAAAAAAAtY/OssKaBgj4KMhwZg5krkB9MD8USIQ98z7QCLcB/s1600/tin%2Bfoil%2Bcolors.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BCGzFDNnX1M/WLWH2VSz-iI/AAAAAAAAAtY/OssKaBgj4KMhwZg5krkB9MD8USIQ98z7QCLcB/s320/tin%2Bfoil%2Bcolors.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />"<i>The high point of my day was seeing Frank emerge from the chrysalis of his closet to unfurl his sartorial wings."&nbsp;</i></div><br />My Book Guru is three for three so far this year. &nbsp;It's time for another dinner and book discussion so I can get some more ideas! Her third recommendation, <u>Be Frank With Me</u>&nbsp;by Julia Claiborne Johnson is an entertaining little novel about a reclusive author and her ten-year-old autistic son and their "forced" cohabitation and interaction with an assistant from the author's publishing house. <br /><br />MM Banning (Mimi) is a literary one hit wonder. Upon publication, her only novel becomes a huge hit, quickly earning its place in the school canon, and its author just as quickly retreats into herself, literally and figuratively, and is not heard from again for many years. &nbsp;(Shades of Harper Lee's life.) During this reclusive period, Mimi mysteriously becomes the mother of an autistic son. &nbsp;He is her only relative and she his, and for a while, all is well, until she becomes the victim of a scam artist and realizes she needs to produce another book to provide financial security for herself and her son, Frank. In order to write, Mimi needs help tending Frank, thus the presence of Alice, the assistant who serves as the book's narrator, in Banning's home. &nbsp;Given Frank's propensities, this task becomes almost Herculean in the effort it requires. Most of the book centers around Alice's attempt to find a way to develop a relationship with Frank. I won't say more. &nbsp;If you want to know how this turns out, read the book.<br /><br />Several of the novel's themes resonated with me, especially given our current cultural climate. Both Mimi and Frank, each in her or his own way, are almost too sensitive to exist in our society as it stands now. When are we going to learn not only to accept but to embrace and celebrate difference? &nbsp; It's way past time for us to grow up and stop being threatened by and afraid of difference among us. That's what our bent toward tribalism and isolationism really is...fear. &nbsp;We are so afraid of those who are different that we band together en masse to expel them from our sight. &nbsp;How far removed is this from the practice of leaving our weak for the wolves? &nbsp;Think about that every time you find yourself telling someone to find a way to fit in or to "get over" injustice. &nbsp;How do we, as a society, respond to people who perpetrate banal and sophomoric cruelties like the ones Frank has to endure in this lovely little novel? Do we reject them, or do we elect them? &nbsp;Funny how we seem to be able to see the cruelty in others' stories but not in our own. &nbsp;To paraphrase one of my favorite teachers: &nbsp;we see the splinter in someone else's eye from 50 feet but miss the log in the mirror every time.<br /><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-16967711043586660772017-01-15T20:34:00.000-05:002017-01-15T20:34:37.543-05:00Undermajordomo Minor<div style="text-align: center;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ASkJrt12KEA/WHwh6NWnm5I/AAAAAAAAArc/470XCoKYneEsCqsTNVbrzE33A0Q74HSGgCLcB/s1600/DSC03829.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ASkJrt12KEA/WHwh6NWnm5I/AAAAAAAAArc/470XCoKYneEsCqsTNVbrzE33A0Q74HSGgCLcB/s320/DSC03829.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by me</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>"His heart was a church of his own choosing, and the lights came through the colorful windows."</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thanks once again to my friend, Jennifer, for a fantastic reading recommendation! &nbsp;I think I'm going to appoint her my Book Guru. &nbsp;I hope she will find the title pay enough. &nbsp;Feel free to use it as a resume builder, Sister.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When she recommended <u>Undermajordomo Minor</u>&nbsp;by Patrick DeWitt, she said that she had no idea how to describe it or how to explain why she liked it. &nbsp;I completely concur with that assessment. &nbsp;It's a quirky novel full of likable characters and witty, engaging dialogue, but I don't really know how to explain exactly what it's about or even why I found it so compelling. &nbsp;The best description I can come up with is an allegorical fairy-tale-type coming-of-age story about a lovable, dishonest and somewhat self-centered young man who leaves home, gets robbed, gets unrobbed, gets a job, falls in love with his robber's daughter, makes friends with said robber among others, makes enemies, gets murdered, gets unmurdered, finds himself abandoned, becomes unjobbed, and embarks on a quest to find his love and life. &nbsp;How's that?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here's what I know for sure: &nbsp;I loved just about every minute of this book and miss the characters and their snappy dialogue and insouciant attitudes like people I wish I knew.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-31673138268464155342017-01-08T18:25:00.000-05:002017-01-08T18:25:15.033-05:00Norwegian By Night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b8uiGvc_tLU/WHLIE-tEzuI/AAAAAAAAAqk/xFbEI4KoOXEGUhB6PSbCeVfn3TZfD6BigCLcB/s1600/DSC03544.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b8uiGvc_tLU/WHLIE-tEzuI/AAAAAAAAAqk/xFbEI4KoOXEGUhB6PSbCeVfn3TZfD6BigCLcB/s320/DSC03544.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by me</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><i>"Most things are both true and absurd." Sheldon/Donny&nbsp;</i></div><br />Thanks to a recommendation from my friend Jennifer, I started 2017 off with an entertaining, quirky little book. &nbsp;<u>Norwegian By Night</u> by Derek Miller is part murder mystery, part political thriller, and part introspective journal of an 82-year-old, Jewish-American, Korean War vet named Sheldon who is also named Donny. <br /><br />In the last few years I seemed to have been drawn to anything set in Scandinavia, so I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the countryside as Sheldon/Donny attempts to elude both the Norwegian police and the KLA mafia-type bad guy whose son Sheldon/Donny has inadvertently kidnapped.<br /><br />The book kept my interest and was a great diversion during the snow storm this weekend. I had never heard of either the book or the author, but I will definitely read his other work. &nbsp;If you need a quick and entertaining read, I highly recommend this one. &nbsp;Even better, I found it on Kindle for $1.99. Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-26443510827447916252015-11-19T12:53:00.001-05:002015-11-19T12:53:52.004-05:00Nontraditional Nonfiction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JTtH2PMNlNc/Vk4GRXngKQI/AAAAAAAAAmo/DxlabXJtGuw/s1600/Nonfiction-November-2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JTtH2PMNlNc/Vk4GRXngKQI/AAAAAAAAAmo/DxlabXJtGuw/s200/Nonfiction-November-2015.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><strong></strong></em></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><em>"Until we have found our own ground and connection to the Whole, we are unsettled, grouchy, and on the edge of falling apart...afterward, you know you rightly belong in this world, and that you are being held by some Larger Force.&nbsp; For some seemingly illogical reason life then feels okay and even good and right and purposeful." Richard Rohr</em></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><em><strong></strong></em></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">Nontraditional Nonfiction: This week we will be focusing on the nontraditional side of reading nonfiction. Nonfiction comes in many forms. There are the traditional hardcover or paperback print books, of course, but then you also have e-books, audiobooks, illustrated and graphic nonfiction, oversized folios, miniatures, internet publishing, and enhanced books complete with artifacts. So many choices! Do you find yourself drawn to or away from nontraditional nonfiction? Do you enjoy some nontraditional formats, but not others? Perhaps you have recommendations for readers who want to dive into nontraditional formats. We want to hear all about it this week!</span></span><br /><br />I thought this week's prompt was going to be one I couldn't do, as I almost always read print books, but after reading some of the other blogger's entries, I decided to broaden my thinking a bit about what I consider "reading."<br /><br />I&nbsp;have discovered that nonfiction is often easier for me on Kindle than in print.&nbsp; I think partly this&nbsp;is because on Kindle, I don't become discouraged by the sheer volume of so many nonfiction books.&nbsp; <u>Spillover</u> by David Quamman, for example, is a book I have been struggling to finish for over two years.&nbsp; I would make a little headway, then set it aside and not pick it up for months, until&nbsp;September when I decided to try it on my Kindle while I was in South Africa.&nbsp; Once I migrated to Kindle, I finished the last half of the book in a little over a month.&nbsp; It had taken me two years to read the first half.&nbsp; I also find that I seem to be able to focus better on my Kindle than I do on print books.&nbsp; I know this is counter to the experience I'm supposed to have.&nbsp; I've read the studies.&nbsp; I don't know how to explain it.&nbsp; Maybe my brain processes backwards.&nbsp; That would explain a lot, actually.&nbsp; I think my next Kindle project is going to be <u>Annals of the Former World</u> by John McPhee.&nbsp; I've been watching <em><strong>Making North America</strong></em> on PBS, and I read somewhere that this was a recommended read by the series host, Kirk Johnson.&nbsp; I'm a sucker for a science book. I also like Kindle for my daily self-help type reading.&nbsp; Right now on Kindle,&nbsp;I'm reading Richard Rohr's <u>Breathing Underwater,</u> <u>The Upanishads,</u> and re-reading <u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u> by Annie Dillard.<br /><br />Audiobooks seem to be a very popular nontraditional format&nbsp;for a lot of people.&nbsp; My only real success with audiobooks has been comedy, David Sedaris in particular.&nbsp; His voice is absolutely perfect for his stories.&nbsp; I don't have a lot of time to listen to audio, and I find my mind often wanders when I try.&nbsp; With the coming of winter, I hope to&nbsp;be walking at the indoor track more.&nbsp; If anyone has any recommendations for audio books to listen to while I walk, please share them.&nbsp; Just remember&nbsp;the&nbsp;options need to&nbsp;be light and fairly easy to follow, or I'll zone out.&nbsp; Walking into a wall is not beyond the realm of&nbsp;possibility for me if I get too intent on what I'm hearing.<br /><br />Although it's been several years since I read one, I have thoroughly enjoyed the graphic novels I have read.&nbsp; Three that stand out in particular are <u>Maus I and II</u> by Art Spiegelman and <u>American Born Chinese</u> by Gene Luen Yang.&nbsp; I've had&nbsp;<u>Persepolis</u> by Marjane Satrapi on my shelf for years.&nbsp; May be a good time to get to that one.<br /><br />Another different way I read is via&nbsp;email.&nbsp; I subscribe to Richard Rohr's daily email, and most days I read it before I even get out of bed.&nbsp; It's&nbsp;a good length for a quick but thought-provoking read.&nbsp; In the last several months, he has published series on Buddhism; Jung; Nonviolence; Myth, Art and Poetry, and on AA's 12 Step program.&nbsp; Check him out.&nbsp; I love his work.<br /><br />My last nontraditional format may be a bit of a stretch, but if audio books count, Podcasts should count too.&nbsp; At one point I was trying to listen to TED talks, The Moth, Literary Disco,&nbsp;and several others, but I was getting overwhelmed and not really listening to any of them, so I've narrowed my Podcasts down to <em><strong>On Being with Krista Tippett.</strong></em>&nbsp; I have never been disappointed with these weekly, thought-provoking conversations.&nbsp; This week's interview with Lisa&nbsp;Randall&nbsp;(<a href="http://www.onbeing.org/program/lisa-randall-dark-matter-and-the-astounding-interconnectedness-of-everything/8100" target="_blank">here)</a> is especially appropriate for a Nonfiction November post. Now I want to read all of her books.&nbsp; Sigh.&nbsp; So many books, so little time.&nbsp; I need to retire.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-27378176575943276112015-11-15T11:54:00.000-05:002015-11-15T11:54:11.471-05:00The Whole World Sparks and Flames<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hySPHzjzWNo/Vki227wIjII/AAAAAAAAAlU/8R4bDLhPipk/s1600/photo%2B%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hySPHzjzWNo/Vki227wIjII/AAAAAAAAAlU/8R4bDLhPipk/s200/photo%2B%25281%2529.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Amy Brandon<br /><i style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></i><i style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">"But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames." &nbsp;Annie Dillard</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">This week's Nonfiction November topic suggestion to pair a nonfiction book with a novel is easy for me, as two of the books I've recently finished lend themselves to pairing in multiple ways: &nbsp;both are narrated by mountain-loving, independent-thinking women, both are set in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, both revel in the beauty of the natural world, and both are books I loved but would hesitate to recommend to everyone. &nbsp;If all of that's not enough, my edition of&nbsp;<u>Fair and Tender Ladies</u>&nbsp;by Lee Smith sports an endorsement by Annie Dillard, the author of the nonfiction part of the pairing,&nbsp;<u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.</u>&nbsp;&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><br />I recently blogged about&nbsp;<u>Fair and Tender Ladies</u>&nbsp;(<a href="http://www.sadiebellereads.blogspot.com/2015/10/it-was-wonderful-life.html">here</a>), an epistolary novel which tells the story, through her own words, of Ivy Rowe, a Virginia mountain woman who is wedded more completely to her precious home mountain than to any member of the human race. &nbsp;&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><br />The second part of this post is going to be a bit more difficult, not because I liked&nbsp;<u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u>&nbsp;less, but because I loved it more. &nbsp;I loved it more, in fact, than about ninety percent of everything else I've ever read. &nbsp;Maybe I'm overstating, but probably not. &nbsp;Now before you get all 1-Click happy and buy you a copy, hear me out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><br />There have been many times I've jumped blind and head-first after a book based on a blog rave and then been completely taken aback when I thought I was getting&nbsp;<u>A Tale of Two Cities</u>&nbsp;and ended up with an engineering text on city planning.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><br /><u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u>&nbsp;is not a novel. &nbsp;It is not linear. &nbsp;There is no catchy dialogue, no clever character development, no plot twists, no climax, no denouement. What exactly it is defies definition. &nbsp;It is poetry. &nbsp;It is beauty. &nbsp;It is a prayer, a meditation, and a continual revelation. It is water and light and wind and wild and earth and luminosity and brilliance and obscurity. &nbsp;At its simplest, it is the journal of one woman's year on Virginia's Tinker Creek. &nbsp;At its most complex, it is, well, I don't know, because I haven't grasped it all yet. &nbsp;In between, it is theosophy, philosophy, theology, biology, entomology, and lots of other -ologies I can't name. &nbsp;I am already re-reading it. &nbsp;I suspect I will be constantly re-reading it over and over again. &nbsp;It must be read slowly and thoughtfully and much of it must be felt instead of understood. &nbsp;It is a balm for the weary soul.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;"><br /><u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u>&nbsp;taught me to see. And oh, the things I have seen:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">a dragonfly hovering right at eye-level, facing off against this odd-looking interloper in his territory on a paddle board,<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">a globular spider launching up and down, up and down, spinning against the back-lit, blue pink, twilight sky,<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">a hognose snake reared up and puffed up like a cobra looking dangerous and angry but in truth benign and terrified<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">scores of schools of fish, silver-bright twisting and turning in the jade waves as they break and reassemble all around me, my skin slippery with their quintessence<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">a pin oak leaf spinning in a crazy dance on a barely visible web filament in a breeze so gentle I missed it until I saw it transform a dead leaf into a gift of extraordinary, exquisite beauty.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">I've spent countless hours looking at nature before. &nbsp;I've been awed and inspired by her beauty before. &nbsp;But usually, I was looking for the big picture, the grand view, the obvious impression. How many of these small, lovely things would I have missed simply because I never thought to look? &nbsp;We see what we expect to see, and I fear this is more curse than blessing. &nbsp;When you open your eyes, really open them, and look around, you find something breathtakingly beautiful in every minute, even it it's just the bright, iridescent green fly occupying the space where your hand will soon be on your car door.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-68664459917759693452015-11-06T11:23:00.001-05:002015-11-06T11:23:55.691-05:00Nonfiction November<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OI5kAMcYJiM/VjppTonH-yI/AAAAAAAAAkk/D83YgGrAxEk/s1600/Nonfiction-November-2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OI5kAMcYJiM/VjppTonH-yI/AAAAAAAAAkk/D83YgGrAxEk/s200/Nonfiction-November-2015.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><br /><em><strong>Your Year in Nonfiction:</strong> Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?</em><br /><em></em><br /><em></em><br />After I decided to participate in Nonfiction November and read the first set of questions (above), I looked back over my year of reading and realized I had only completed&nbsp;two nonfiction books.&nbsp; That's just sad.&nbsp; It doesn't mean I haven't been reading nonfiction, just that I haven't been completing it.&nbsp; I'm still in the middle of <u>Spillover</u> by David Quamann, which I find fascinating but have to be in a certain mood to read, and I'm also&nbsp;still in the middle of <u>Immortal Diamond</u> by Richard Rohr, which I am enjoying but need time and silence to absorb, both of which are in very short supply for me lately.<br /><br />One of the&nbsp;books I have finished is one of the best, most unusual books I have ever read:&nbsp; <u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u> by Annie Dillard.&nbsp; I don't usually have favorite books, but this one may be an exception.&nbsp; That said, this book is not for everyone.&nbsp; It is not easy.&nbsp; It cannot be read quickly.&nbsp; It requires patience, and parts of it will defy understanding on certain days and in certain ways.&nbsp; I loved it, but I hesitate to recommend it, knowing how difficult it is and how hard it is for me to know who will love it and who will be like:&nbsp; huh?&nbsp; One day I will tackle the task of blogging about it, but not today.<br /><br />In the spirit of Nonfiction November, I just went to the library and checked out four nonfiction books to dabble around in this week-end.&nbsp; I don't limit myself to topics or types, although I tend not to like biography.&nbsp; What I hope to get out of participating in Nonfiction November is the specific goal of finishing or at least making good progress on <u>Spillover</u>, as well as possibly finding my next Nonfiction read.<br /><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-89075265909776210542015-10-28T16:21:00.001-04:002015-10-28T16:21:51.901-04:00It Was a Wonderful Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a9kMOY9pFmo/VjD6idjQ-UI/AAAAAAAAAkI/92XOVDbU-8A/s1600/360%2B%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a9kMOY9pFmo/VjD6idjQ-UI/AAAAAAAAAkI/92XOVDbU-8A/s200/360%2B%25282%2529.JPG" width="150" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>"The hawk flys round and round, the sky is so blue.&nbsp; I think I can hear the old bell ringing like I rang it to call them home&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; oh I was young then, and I walked in my body like a Queen"</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Ivy Ransom in <u>Fair and Tender Ladies</u> by Lee Smith</em></div><br /><br />I know this may sound crazy, but sometimes, I don't really know for sure if I like a book, even when&nbsp;I am in the middle of reading it.&nbsp; I read so much and so variously that&nbsp;novels seem to run together.&nbsp;&nbsp;Sometimes, I&nbsp;can't even remember for sure exactly what I have and haven't read.&nbsp; More problematically, I suppose,&nbsp;often I go into reading&nbsp;a novel&nbsp;with a bias based on my&nbsp;past&nbsp;impressions of&nbsp;the author.&nbsp; I've found this to be a real problem, as my reading tastes seem to change daily.&nbsp; At one point in my life, for example, I read a lot of Ruth Rendell and loved her. I remember thinking&nbsp;<u>The Crocodile Bird</u> was fantastic.&nbsp;&nbsp;A few years ago,&nbsp;I read some of her more recent works and thought, "yeah, not so much."&nbsp; Now I don't even remember what I didn't like or why.&nbsp; And don't even get me started on Harper Lee.&nbsp; <u>To Kill A Mockingbird</u> framed my youth and my young adulthood as one of my reasons for being a lover of literature.&nbsp; Now I am&nbsp;making myself struggle to finish <u>Go Set a Watchman</u>.&nbsp; But that's a different post for a different day.&nbsp; <br /><br />Right now, I want to talk about Lee Smith.&nbsp; I have been hit or miss with Lee Smith.&nbsp; I loved <u>Oral History</u>, and I loved <u>On Agate Hill</u>.&nbsp; But I had to make myself finish <u>The Devil's Dream</u>, and I was&nbsp;completely underwhelmed by <u>Guests on Earth</u>.&nbsp;So when I started <u>Fair and Tender Ladies</u> about four different&nbsp;times and it never caught me, I was on the verge of giving it up for good.&nbsp; Then Alexandra of <a href="http://www.thesleeplessreader.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Sleepless Reader</a>&nbsp;gave the book five stars on Goodreads, and I thought, "maybe I need to make myself finish this one."&nbsp; I am so glad I did.&nbsp; About half way into the novel, in my own constant interior monologue and also&nbsp;in my dreams, I found myself&nbsp;thinking in Ivy Ransom's voice, and that's when I knew they had me, Lee Smith and Ivy Ransom, they&nbsp;had me, and I loved this book and this character.&nbsp; <br /><br />The book is a collection of letters Ivy writes to various people over the course of her life.&nbsp; I wasn't sure at first if I was going to like the structure or not, but it worked for this novel's purpose of revealing Ivy's life in pieces over time.&nbsp; And what a wonderful life it was. I try to&nbsp;avoid re-telling plot points or revealing much about characters, but I do want to note this:&nbsp; I love that Ivy Ransom never loses herself.&nbsp;She never loses sight of who she is; she never loses her own voice. I find this difficult to believe, given her time, place, and culture.&nbsp;&nbsp;One of my grandmothers would have grown up in almost exactly the same time and place as Ivy Ransom.&nbsp; The lessons of that culture still haunt me today.&nbsp;Those cultural mores usually overwhelm you in the end.&nbsp; I've fought against them my&nbsp;whole life, still do.&nbsp;&nbsp; And I will have to admit that I don't hold on to my own voice nearly as honestly nor as fearlessly as Ivy Ransom did.&nbsp; She is my hero, and I hope some day I learn to live as honestly and as ferociously as she did.Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-3278267238895710072015-08-12T17:19:00.001-04:002015-08-12T17:21:59.523-04:00My Excuse for Being Gone...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6GIQBF85aYQ/Vcu1w7aFkxI/AAAAAAAAAjA/yye0tZ8CI3M/s1600/Me%2Band%2BKen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6GIQBF85aYQ/Vcu1w7aFkxI/AAAAAAAAAjA/yye0tZ8CI3M/s320/Me%2Band%2BKen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;"><em>There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as between an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light, too, and that is its real function.</em><br /><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">-- Vincent Van Gogh –</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></i>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></i>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I'm so sorry I haven't blogged about what I've been reading lately.&nbsp; I promise I have been reading.&nbsp; I'll try to update my <strong>Books Read</strong> list soon, but I'm having a heck of a time getting any blog posts written.&nbsp; On July 4th, Ken proposed, and I've been a little distracted since then.&nbsp; We are getting married at the end of September.&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I promise I am still reading.&nbsp; But between work responsibility and personal life, I haven't been able to write much recently.&nbsp; I fell and hit my head over a week ago, and I have a concussion now, which does not lend itself to written reflection.&nbsp; My daughter leaves for UNC-Chapel Hill on Friday.&nbsp; After that, I hope to be able to get back to normal.&nbsp; Sorry for the crazy interruptions!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></i>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p>In the meantime, Read On!&nbsp; I am :)</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></i>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></i>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #29303b; font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span>&nbsp;</div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-17570075241242136602015-05-23T21:08:00.000-04:002015-05-23T21:08:06.743-04:00CCQ II -- O Pioneers!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fgQjpVzrJC4/VV9WG-HRQ9I/AAAAAAAAAhw/H94wvGBYZqI/s1600/Grass.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fgQjpVzrJC4/VV9WG-HRQ9I/AAAAAAAAAhw/H94wvGBYZqI/s200/Grass.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Anna Reavis</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>"He felt as if a clear light broke upon his mind, and with it a conviction that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good was possible to men." from <u>O Pioneers!</u> by Willa Cather</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I've finished the second Willa Cather novel in my Comprehensive Cather Quest, and I think I'm in love again. &nbsp;<u>O Pioneers!</u>&nbsp;made me feel like I remember feeling after stumbling onto <u>My Antonia</u> purely by accident on a trip to Alaska, of all places. &nbsp; Since that serendipitous discovery in Anchorage in 2000, <u>My Antonia</u> has remained in my memory as one of my favorite books. &nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Thursday afternoon, as I was finishing the novel, I began to sense reflections and hear echoes of words, ideas, and thoughts I had read earlier in the day as I read in <u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u>&nbsp;by Annie Dillard. &nbsp;So I opened both books and started to compare. &nbsp;If you ever look for similarities, allusions, common thought processes, they seem to be everywhere. &nbsp;As I read back and forth between the two books, inevitably, it seems, I began to hear whispers of other, earlier thinkers. &nbsp;Was Whitman the father and Thoreau the grandfather of these revelations? &nbsp;Eventually I discovered that <u>O Pioneers!</u>&nbsp;is named after a Whitman poem, but I didn't know that at the time. &nbsp;It's amazing, really, when you begin to follow the logical progression of ideas down its time-defying rabbit hole. &nbsp;There have been so few truly enlightened thinkers in our recorded history, and so many of their revelations tend toward the same end: &nbsp;that grace, beauty, hope, and redemption are what matter, that the world is full of light if we will just see it, that nirvana, salvation, enlightenment is reached in exactly the opposite way we think...by letting go and letting life unfold as it will.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><u>O Pioneers!</u>, the first novel in Cather's Prairie Trilogy, is the story of the unfolding of life for strong, independent Alexandra Bergson, who, as a teen, takes control of her family's struggling farm and builds it into a sprawling, thriving estate. &nbsp;As the novel opens, John Bergson lays dying. &nbsp;One of the few things we learn about him is that he only trusts his adolescent daughter, Alexandra, to run his fledgling farm. &nbsp;Although he has two sons near her age, he knows only she has the foresight and feeling for the land necessary for success and survival for his recently arrived immigrant family.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Alexandra devotes her life to the family and farm, sacrificing her chance to have a family of her own in order for the land to flourish and for her youngest brother, Emil, to have what she considers a chance at the proper kind of life. &nbsp;Emil does go to college and has plans to become a lawyer. &nbsp;Having reached the age where I no longer judge success by ascendancy, I see quite a bit of irony in Alexandra's inability to judge herself a success. &nbsp;I find her to be one of the most successful, courageous women in literature. &nbsp;She has both big courage and little courage, which I find the hardest kind. &nbsp;The big, grasping courage life sometimes requires isn't the difficult kind of courage. &nbsp;When life sweeps you away and requires that kind of courage, you push ahead and are carried along by adrenaline and momentum. &nbsp;Obviously, Alexandra has this kind of courage. &nbsp;She takes over the family farm in her teens after her father's death. &nbsp;The difficult kind of courage is the small, everyday kind, the kind required to live in ennui, routine, and loneliness. &nbsp;That, I think, is the courage that allows Alexandra to succeed. &nbsp;I just wish I had that kind of courage.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I love the people and the places of this story. &nbsp;This book met so many of my requirements: &nbsp;likable characters, lovely setting, strong woman lead, thought-provoking ideas, and finally, redemption and hope at the end. &nbsp;Just reading the words calmed and centered me. &nbsp;The novel is luminous; the story, the words, they are luminous. &nbsp;Cather's writing feels like an Aaron Copeland song: &nbsp;open, expansive, and full of hope and promise.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-73261113397628472752015-05-08T16:08:00.003-04:002015-05-13T14:58:34.713-04:00Comprehensive Cather Quest<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3CmKJkthrMI/VUzbbFmJQwI/AAAAAAAAAhM/DllgLajnVB0/s1600/Cather.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3CmKJkthrMI/VUzbbFmJQwI/AAAAAAAAAhM/DllgLajnVB0/s200/Cather.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><em>"Under the moon, under the cold, splendid stars, there were only those two things awake and sleepless; death and love, the rushing river and his burning heart."</em></div><br />Finally, I've&nbsp;begun my Comprehensive Cather Quest, and what a lovely little first book&nbsp;for its beginning&nbsp;was <u>Alexander's Bridge</u>.&nbsp; I'm not entirely sure why this novel appealed to me as it decidedly does not meet my normal criterion of happy&nbsp;or uplifting, but at this particular moment in time, it is striking me as one of my favorite&nbsp;of her&nbsp;novels.&nbsp; The characterizations are wonderful, and the plot of this short, moral tale is quick and tight.<br /><br /><u>Alexander's Bridge</u>&nbsp;ostensibly is about one man's mid-life crisis and the&nbsp;extra-marital affair resulting from his attempt to re-capture his youth.&nbsp; Like every other Cather novel I've ever read, however, the plot only scratches the surface of the novel's substance.&nbsp; At novel's beginning, Bartley Alexander&nbsp;is just becoming&nbsp;aware of the depth of his quotidian disquiet.&nbsp;On a trip to London, upon reflecting on his life, "He found himself living exactly the kind of life he had determined to escape." When&nbsp;he&nbsp;soon&nbsp;crosses paths with&nbsp;the love of his youth,&nbsp;his life&nbsp;veers&nbsp;in a direction&nbsp;he didn't&nbsp;anticipate but probably should have.&nbsp;That's what lack of self-awareness gets us, I think.&nbsp; We don't know ourselves well enough to realize we're miserable until we do something drastic, like stray from a marriage.<br /><br />Given the author's age at the time of her writing this novel, I wonder if she were beginning herself to feel the "dulling weariness of on-coming middle age."&nbsp; Maybe the approach of the "dead calm of middle life" is what prompted&nbsp;her&nbsp;after&nbsp;the publication of <u>Alexander's Bridge</u>&nbsp;to embrace herself as a novelist&nbsp;and shrug off the interference of the daily grind.&nbsp; I do think we all come to a&nbsp;time in our lives when we have to start&nbsp;living our true selves,&nbsp;letting go of social expectations, and accepting that our own path very well may not follow the "accepted" way.&nbsp; Thank goodness for the bravery&nbsp;Willa Cather&nbsp;found to follow her path, which allows us today the gift of passages like this one:<br /><br />"After all, life doesn't offer a man much.&nbsp; You work like the devil and think you're getting on, and&nbsp;suddenly you discover that you've only been getting yourself tied up.&nbsp; A million details drink you dry.&nbsp; Your life keeps going for things you don't want, and all the while you are being built alive into a social structure you don't care a rap about.&nbsp; I sometimes wonder what sort of chap I'd have been if I hadn't been this sort; I want to go and live out his potentialities, too."<br /><br />As I learn about Cather's&nbsp;life, I begin to&nbsp;suspect that the variance in her work&nbsp;is a reflection of her&nbsp;complex,&nbsp;complicated personality.&nbsp; In&nbsp;the&nbsp;prologue&nbsp;she wrote to <u>Alexander's Bridge</u>, she seems to be apologizing for its not being like her later work.&nbsp; I love <u>My Antonia</u>; it's one of my favorite novels, but some of her&nbsp;other work...not so much.&nbsp; While <u>Alexander's Bridge</u> isn't&nbsp;in the same vein nor of the same caliber as <u>My Antonia</u>, I found it to be much more enjoyable than some of her other work (The Professor's House, for one).&nbsp; Maybe a re-read of those novels will help me understand what I missed the first time.&nbsp;&nbsp;I wonder if I was just disappointed in them because they weren't <u>My Antonia</u>, and then I went into <u>Alexander's Bridge</u> expecting to be disappointed and was thus pleasantly surprised.&nbsp; I'm a perverse person that way.&nbsp; Don't tell me I'm going to like something, or I won't, and vice versa.&nbsp; I'm going stop trying to analyze it and&nbsp;just&nbsp;be thankful for a such a good experience to kick off my quest to know Cather more fully.&nbsp; Next up are her first three short stories and then on to <u>O Pioneers!</u>&nbsp; Read along if you'd like!<br /><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-12762990470203956062015-05-06T14:34:00.002-04:002015-05-06T14:34:59.415-04:00Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W79395moo0w/VUpdqlzH6TI/AAAAAAAAAgw/UsgSFaBEjA4/s1600/lady%2Banna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W79395moo0w/VUpdqlzH6TI/AAAAAAAAAgw/UsgSFaBEjA4/s1600/lady%2Banna.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif; font-size: large;">I won an Anthony Trollope novel from </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif; font-size: large;"></span>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif; font-size: large;">Karen of <a href="http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Karens Books and Chocolates</a>!</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif; font-size: large;"></span>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif; font-size: large;">Yay for generous book bloggers...</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif; font-size: large;"></span>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif; font-size: large;">Now for more reading time!</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">Thanks, Karen!</span></div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-16404053987915212532015-05-04T13:22:00.000-04:002015-05-04T13:22:02.297-04:00I Can't Even...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CF__kZ6stbo/VS6EzFZDvhI/AAAAAAAAAdk/gooh80j2v8I/s1600/DC_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CF__kZ6stbo/VS6EzFZDvhI/AAAAAAAAAdk/gooh80j2v8I/s1600/DC_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crazy David Copperfield Notes</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><em>"Never...be mean in anything, never be false; never be cruel.&nbsp; Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you."&nbsp; Aunt Betsey to David Copperfield</em></div><br />Because I'm nothing if not scattered these days,&nbsp; I've picked up and put down more books than I've read this year.&nbsp; SO annoying!&nbsp; In addition to being book fickle, I've also been blog paralyzed on trying to write about David Copperfield.&nbsp; I'm over-thinking, over-planning, over-analyzing, and just plain talking myself down about what I could possibly have to say about such a classic.&nbsp; My reaction to the book felt a bit under-whelming, probably because I had expected to adore it, and I didn't.&nbsp;&nbsp; I liked it, but I've enjoyed other Dickens works more.&nbsp;The scope of the novel was sometimes so overwhelming that I feel sure I missed a lot.&nbsp; Even with all the note-taking, I don't know that I followed all of the character and plot developments. <br /><br />I can't even process it all, much less blog about it, so all I'm gonna say is this:&nbsp; the characters, places,&nbsp;and time&nbsp;of the story felt so very real to me that I began to feel like the events and people were actual memories rather than just something I had read. Maybe that's what makes&nbsp;a&nbsp;novel a Classic. &nbsp;That we, the children of the 20th century living in a seemingly disposable world of such rapid change, can pick up a novel set in a distant&nbsp;place and time&nbsp;and suddenly become part of that time and place and have it become so much a part of us that sometimes even a single sentence can alter the course of our lives.&nbsp; How lucky we are to have access to such an accumulated wealth of wisdom.&nbsp; Maybe instead of requiring make-overs and sound bites from our politicians, we should just require that they read...broadly and often.Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-2981246932279240922015-04-26T12:31:00.001-04:002015-04-26T12:31:36.517-04:00Readathon Ramblings<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r7ovdq3EhHA/VT0MwfGbDPI/AAAAAAAAAgI/6BVk-AvLPrs/s1600/Roscoe%2C%2BLes%2BMis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r7ovdq3EhHA/VT0MwfGbDPI/AAAAAAAAAgI/6BVk-AvLPrs/s1600/Roscoe%2C%2BLes%2BMis.jpg" height="320" width="315" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roscoe, Les Miserable<br /><br /><div align="center">﻿</div></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><em>"Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws."&nbsp; Victor Hugo</em></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><em></em>&nbsp;</div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I wasn't a legitimate Readathon participant in Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, as I can't do anything for 24 hours straight, and I also can't skip sleep, but I did read and drop in and out on Twitter as much as possible yesterday.&nbsp; I decided to use the day to survey some of the books I've had on my shelves forever and have never gotten around to reading.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In Hour One, I dipped into <u>Clan of the Cave Bear</u> by Jean Auel.&nbsp; I read these books as a teenager and enjoyed them.&nbsp; The first few chapters grabbed my attention, but when I tried to go back to it in Hour Fifteen, I became impatient with the odd "dialogue" between Creb and Iza.&nbsp; Just fatigue?&nbsp; I'm not sure.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In Hour Two, after some homemade biscuits and jam and a bit of yoga to stretch, I read the prologue of <u>Spira</u>l by Koji Suzuki.&nbsp; I've had three of his books on my shelf for years and don't know anything about either him or the books.&nbsp; I can't even remember how I came to have them.&nbsp; I do think, however, after that quick look, that I will go back to this one.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The beginning of Hour Three was interrupted by these visitors:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Np6RDlj61Hc/VT0Oyn-92SI/AAAAAAAAAgU/oma_09lqXHo/s1600/Anna%2Band%2BRoscoe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Np6RDlj61Hc/VT0Oyn-92SI/AAAAAAAAAgU/oma_09lqXHo/s1600/Anna%2Band%2BRoscoe.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Anna was supposed to be with her dad today, but as she was dog-sitting for a friend, she thought I might like some puppy time.&nbsp; Roscoe is a Boxer/Catahoula mix and is briefly delightful.&nbsp; I'm too old for puppies long-term.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">After settling down a bit, I used Hour Three to read a few chapters of <u>Alexander's Bridge</u> by Willa Cather.&nbsp; Last year, I decided that I wanted to try to read all of Cather's novels in order, so this is what I hope will be the beginning of that project.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In Hour Four, after more yoga, more Roscoe, and pizza for lunch, I dipped briefly into <u>The World Without Us </u>by Alan Weisman.&nbsp; I really want to read this one, but I'm afraid it may send me into despair.&nbsp; I already spend too much time worrying about our impact on the planet.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The bubble bath, candles, and Anthony Trollope novel I chose for Hour Five led to a major nap in Hours Six and Seven.&nbsp;&nbsp;This combination&nbsp;was not a good choice for a Readathon.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hour Eight was my hour to read in <u>Les Miserable</u>.&nbsp; I have been working my way through this one for years.&nbsp; Luckily, I was at an interesting part.&nbsp; If you haven't read the description of the garden at the house Jean Valjean rents upon leaving the convent, find it and read it! Truly fabulous stuff! I'm going to keep plugging away at this one I'm sure for many more months.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hours 9-11 were given over to life and a lovely steak dinner.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hour 12 was Ken's and my hour to read aloud from <u>To Kill A Mockinbird</u> by Harper Lee.&nbsp; I love this book every time I read it, and it's so much fun to read and share aloud.&nbsp; </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hours 13 and 14 belonged to Ken.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hour 15 I went back to <u>Alexander's Bridge</u>.&nbsp; I think I'm going to like this one!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And that was it for me.&nbsp; Hours 16-24 + belonged to The Sandman.&nbsp; I require a lot of sleep.&nbsp; I loved being able to give myself an excuse to read all day!&nbsp; I do this a lot anyway, but yesterday, I had a reason for it.&nbsp; No guilt! Yay!&nbsp; Definitely something I'll dip into again in the future!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">﻿</div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com5Americas (null)36.133533 -80.632033tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-48814085635832408302015-04-21T15:30:00.000-04:002015-04-21T15:30:53.305-04:00Wherein Russian Names Almost Defeat Us<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ALRkhOoudFQ/VTZaNW_UPRI/AAAAAAAAAeY/icuRzp-fHAc/s1600/Dr%2BZ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ALRkhOoudFQ/VTZaNW_UPRI/AAAAAAAAAeY/icuRzp-fHAc/s1600/Dr%2BZ.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nellie Olsen Again Unimpressed With Weighty Books<br /><br /><div align="center">&nbsp;</div></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">Ken and I&nbsp;finally finished <u>Doctor Zhivago</u> last night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It definitely is <strong>not</strong> a book to read aloud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; Let me repeat that:&nbsp; <strong>DO NOT</strong> attempt to read this book aloud.&nbsp; It should come with a warning label to that effect.&nbsp; &nbsp;</span>I am&nbsp;thoroughly confused about what happened and to whom it happened, when, where, and how.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So many different characters with so many different, unrecognizable names and different permutations of those&nbsp;names.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; Lest you are tempted to adopt haughty airs, as did I,&nbsp;and think, "Oh, I can handle that one;&nbsp; I know all about the movie," let me just say that t</span>he movie only tells about half the story, with fewer&nbsp;characters who all&nbsp;consistently use the same names.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; And in the movie, someone else is pronouncing things for you and, I repeat,&nbsp;consistently using THE SAME DAMN NAMES.&nbsp; I cannot stress enough how important it is to pick a name and stick with it, especially if it is a long-ass Russian name made up of multiple consonants in a row.&nbsp; I took Russian in college, and those names still defeated me.&nbsp; Of course, I only remember how to say Hello, Good Day, How are You, and Where's the Vodka...so there's that.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">We've been struggling to finish this one for months.&nbsp;&nbsp; Listening to us trying to pronounce these names for each other became almost farcical and was a better exercise in patience and understanding than any couples counseling session&nbsp;could ever be.&nbsp;&nbsp; It was my choice for an&nbsp;oral co-read.&nbsp; Ken's staying with me&nbsp;through it I think says something about his commitment to me.&nbsp; Either that or he's too confused to leave now.&nbsp; He's chosen <u>To Kill A Mockingbird</u> for our next co-read.&nbsp; I'm pretty sure we'll be able to pronounce those names.&nbsp; </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">And now, perversely,&nbsp;after I've said all that, let me admit that I am seriously considering starting&nbsp;the novel&nbsp;over on my own, because I feel like I missed too much that I should have caught and considered.&nbsp; Don't analyze me; it won't get you anywhere.&nbsp; Talk about down a rabbit hole, sheesh.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span>&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span>&nbsp;</div>Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1397715447752979124.post-58208346561686419122015-04-20T12:01:00.001-04:002015-04-20T12:06:04.441-04:00A New Discovery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lvH5fpUO2OU/VTUQdRgv_eI/AAAAAAAAAeE/5JRU7iA_sr0/s1600/Rumer%2BGodden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lvH5fpUO2OU/VTUQdRgv_eI/AAAAAAAAAeE/5JRU7iA_sr0/s1600/Rumer%2BGodden.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></div><br />It's been a rainy, Rumer Godden week-end for me.&nbsp; Last week, while I was waiting for my other books by Chimamanda Adichie to come in, I was trolling blogs looking for some reading ideas when I came across a review by Kate at Nose in a Book about Rumer Godden.&nbsp; For some reason, the name seemed familiar to me, although I know I've never read her work, nor did I know anything about her.&nbsp; On a whim, I decided to see if my library happened to have any of her books.&nbsp;&nbsp;Often my small, underfunded library doesn't have what I'm looking for, but lo and behold,&nbsp;they had&nbsp;several of her books on the shelf.&nbsp; It seemed&nbsp;like they had more Juvenile Fiction than Adult Fiction by her, but they did have a few novels shelved, as well as&nbsp;a book&nbsp;by her sister, Jon Godden.<br /><br />My first choice, <u>The Kitchen Madonna,</u>&nbsp;was&nbsp;shelved as an adult novel, but I think&nbsp;should have been&nbsp;in Juvenile Fiction.&nbsp; This is a lovely little book about a reserved, unusual young boy who finally bonds with one of his sitters, an older&nbsp;Ukrainian woman named Marta.&nbsp; When Marta&nbsp;tells Gregory that she is unhappy with the lack of a small holy place for a Madonna in his family kitchen, Gregory sets out on a journey to find Marta a Madonna.&nbsp; Throughout the course of his project to provide Marta with a "Kitchen Maddona," Gregory begins to open up to the scope and power of loving other people.<br /><br />My second choice, <u>Pippa Passes</u>, was odd.&nbsp; I enjoyed reading it, but it was decidedly odd.&nbsp; Parts of the plot felt random and forced and not particularly believable, and a few times I felt like Godden was proselytizing for the Catholic church, but the writing was solid, and the setting was Venice.&nbsp; I love reading about Venice, because I love Venice.&nbsp; At the end of the book, I decided it was probably just not one of her strongest works, even so, I was engaged and interested by it, so I went back to the library this morning to pick up her other books.<br /><br />I think Rumer Godden is going to be a great author for me to pick up when I'm between denser reads looking for an entertaining break.&nbsp; I have a hard time finding authors to fill this&nbsp;need for me because I have neither the patience nor the time for poor writing.&nbsp; What a wonderfully diverting discovery!&nbsp; Thanks Kate <a href="http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/">http://www.noseinabook.co.uk</a> !<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Amy http://www.blogger.com/profile/15353920822811597411noreply@blogger.com4